One of the issues I encountered was with my end connections. Appearently I suck at terminating wires. Once I picked up a racheting crimping tool, all of my connections were a lot smoother. I think this also caused my motors to "malfunction" at times as a result which made troubleshooting more difficult.
I realized the issue with my end stops using the M119 command to give their current state. You either want them all high (NC?) or all low (NO?), and in my case, my Z endstop was reading as high (NO?) do to bad wiring on my part, so it never moved up.
Another issue I had, though I don't believe it is related to this thread, was that the voltages on my motors were to low. Using a multimeter, I adjusted the voltages to 0.4 V each (found it online somewhere). Be real careful adjusting the voltages though, as it is easy to slip and short the A4988.
EDIT: Oh, and I did have to take my J-Head apart do to a leak between the aluminium block and the PTFE, which I read was a common issue with J-Heads...more so with the clones. Took it apart cold which might have been an issue, but was pretty easy to do. Cleaned off all the leaked PLA and seemed to get it back together again and working, with a little plumbers tape to hopefully prevent future leaks. I will admit that I encountered a jam after re-leveling my bed and have since given up. I believe I failed to load the PLA correctly at the time, but have been to frustrated to trouble shoot it yet.
I realized the issue with my end stops using the M119 command to give their current state. You either want them all high (NC?) or all low (NO?), and in my case, my Z endstop was reading as high (NO?) do to bad wiring on my part, so it never moved up.
Another issue I had, though I don't believe it is related to this thread, was that the voltages on my motors were to low. Using a multimeter, I adjusted the voltages to 0.4 V each (found it online somewhere). Be real careful adjusting the voltages though, as it is easy to slip and short the A4988.
EDIT: Oh, and I did have to take my J-Head apart do to a leak between the aluminium block and the PTFE, which I read was a common issue with J-Heads...more so with the clones. Took it apart cold which might have been an issue, but was pretty easy to do. Cleaned off all the leaked PLA and seemed to get it back together again and working, with a little plumbers tape to hopefully prevent future leaks. I will admit that I encountered a jam after re-leveling my bed and have since given up. I believe I failed to load the PLA correctly at the time, but have been to frustrated to trouble shoot it yet.